It is always important to stay healthy and take care of oneself. College can act as an obstacle with its overwhelming nature, impeding students from eating good food, exercising and just overall looking out for number one. Time is an essential element to manage if one wants to stay healthy amidst the challenges that college throws at students.
I never imagined that I would have a hard time thinking for myself or learning to act like an adult. For so much of my life I had taken my parent’s contributions for granted and now that I was at school I had to fend for myself, learn how to take responsibility within my own, individual life. Many of the leisures that I enjoyed at home, like a planned dinner, no longer existed at college. Now I had to trudge to the college cafeteria in the mornings if I wanted a decent breakfast before I headed off to my 9 AM classes. This was one of the hardest bits to manage on my own. It was hard to motivate myself to go to the cafeteria in the morning when I hated practically all of the food options that they served, their selection was largely unhealthy. To remedy this I later learned that I would need to buy my own food from the grocery stores downtown, on occasion, if I wanted to start my day off with a somewhat healthy meal.

It was a challenging feat for me, however, because I often got very poor sleep on account of procrastinating most of my homework until the night before. This usually resulted in late nights, bad sleep and unsatisfying mornings after. I ended up procrastinating a lot of my work because I often struggled with managing my responsibilities and balancing my priorities. I would do my best to dedicate time during the day to study outside of class, but I often got hungry and had to abandon my studies to make sure I was eating enough food throughout my day. Once night came around, I was usually exhausted, but I still had work to do and I was normally out of time to get it done. This is still a skill I have not perfected, but I have a plan for next year. By combining separate tasks, like eating and studying, I would be able to multitask and meet various priorities at once instead of feeling overwhelmed and dragging them separately out across the day.
Exercise was another priority that I struggled to get in the habit of. I have a large passion for running and going for walks and when I am home I generally have a friend to keep me responsible. One of my highschool friends and I will run almost every morning during the summer, keeping each other in check. Our consistency was largely rooted in our friendship, we made sure to text each other each morning and leave the house at a regular time (normally 9 AM). At college, however, I didn’t have my friend. I had plenty of other friends, but most of my friends are swimmers and many of them were not interested in running, so I learned that I (like with eating) had to fend for myself. It was practically impossible to motivate myself to run after my horrendous sleep, but I found time later in the day, maybe during a block of time in between classes, to get out and run on one of the hiking trails across from campus.
A lot of our needs are hard to truly recognize when we accept them as they are when we live with our parents. Our parents provide for us, put food on the table, teach us how to manage our schoolwork and overall how to be healthy. Once we step foot in college, however, it is an entirely different playing field. We have to adapt and find structure in the chaos and uncertainty, finding time to take care of ourselves as best we can.

By Ryder Huseby
Ryder is going into his Junior year as a Writing and Rhetoric major at Pace University in Pleasantville, New York. Ryder is a passionate reader and enjoys going to the movie theater as often as he can.
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